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IT is unlikely that any mainstream political party in Pakistan, let alone a purportedly progressive organisation, would today issue an election manifesto containing sentiments such as these: “Towards India, a policy of confrontation will be maintained until the question of Kashmir, Farakka, Beruberi and other pending matters are settled.

“Entirely in consonance with the principle of supporting liberation movements, Pakistan will support the cause of the people of Assam who are fighting for their independence.”

These sentences can be found in the Pakistan People’s Party’s manifesto for the 1970 elections, and two of the references therein became redundant shortly thereafter, once Bangladesh gained independence. Assam tends to erupt every now and then, but Pakistani support for the rebels is hardly an issue.

Kashmir is a different matter, but even in that context chances are that only fringe groups would vow to pursue a broad “policy of confrontation”.

Does it follow that after 65 years as reluctant neighbours the two countries have evolved a less hostile code of coexistence?
Perhaps even one that may make way in due course for something akin to friendship?

There have lately been signs of incremental progress, which is gratifying. But anything more than a flicker of optimism would be hard to justify, given the number of occasions on which hopes have been raised only to be shot down or blown to bits.

Six and a half decades of accumulated mistrust — now there’s something worth exploding or consigning to a bonfire of competing vanities. But it’s very hard to envisage such a development, barring a miraculously auspicious configuration of the stars or, more realistically, the coincidence of clear-sighted, sure-footed governments in New Delhi and Islamabad.

After long years of mutual vilification, propaganda and parallel distortions of history, a reversal surely wouldn’t be an easy task. But, given the political will, it wouldn’t be impossible either. At a popular level, fraternisation across the divide, whenever it is allowed, tends to be fruitful. Perhaps that is why it is rarely permitted.

There’s lately been talk, not for the first time, of more lenient visa protocols. Let’s see where it leads. One of the primary problems, of course, is that politicians and other vested interests on both sides have grown accustomed to scoring easy points off the ‘enemy’ paradigm. The rival defence establishments grow fat on the prospect of confrontation.

There can be little question that both countries could have been considerably better off in various ways had the resources frittered away on arms purchases and other martial pursuits been more productively expended. Judicious investment in energy generation, for instance, may have spared India the embarrassment of giving the impression that it was trying to outdo its neighbour in terms of electricity shortages.

Indian citizens are no strangers to loadshedding, although the situation is hardly as precarious as it has become in Pakistan. More disturbingly, substantial swathes of territory in both countries are yet to witness the wonders of electrification.

India and Pakistan have ostensibly followed different trajectories since their independence, yet many of the problems they face are remarkably similar. Corruption, for instance — although Pakistan may have had something of a head start — and poverty, malnutrition and rapid population growth.

India’s economic ascent has spawned incredible disparities of wealth. “India may have fewer billionaires than China,” Perry Anderson wrote recently in an extended dissertation on the nation in The London Review of Books, “but they are also richer, and their share of the national wealth is far greater: just 66 residential billionaires control assets worth more than a fifth of the country’s GDP.”

The disparities in Pakistan are barely less grotesque. And wealth tends in both cases to trickle out rather than trickle down.

There’s a more unexpected parallel, too. “The [Indian] Supreme Court,” Anderson writes, “which had not played a particularly distinguished role under Nehru, disgraced itself by rubber-stamping [Indira Gandhi’s] emergency. Thereafter, spurred by the reaction against it and no doubt ashamed of its past servility, the court has moved in the opposite direction, becoming the principal breakwater in India against threats to liberty, abuses of power and theft of public goods.…

“Today, the court is so proactive that it can not only annul laws passed in the Indian parliament if it decides they are unconstitutional (the normal prerogative of a supreme court), but also demand that parliament pass laws it determines are urgently needed — a juridical innovation without precedent in any other country.”

It may stop short, though, of prescribing a particular course of action for the opposition, as Pakistan’s Supreme Court lately appeared to do while mulling over a contempt-of-court law of which it disapproved.

It now appears poised to pronounce judgment on the letter-writing skills of Raja Pervez Ashraf, who was hastily ensconced as prime minister after his predecessor, Yousuf Raza Gilani, was sent home for disobedience. The latter declared this week that if the court reprised its earlier verdict, his party would not take it lying down (as it did in Gilani’s case) because “every day is not Sunday”. Will this enigmatic warning provoke their lordships to decree a month of Sundays, just to prove him wrong?

There’s something peculiarly schoolboyish about the clash between the executive and judiciary in Islamabad, but then there are a number of respects in which both Pakistan and India betray symptoms of juvenility. There are taboo areas, intellectual barriers that it’s considered unwise or unpatriotic to transgress. They revolve around matters of faith, interpretations of history, questions of territorial integrity.

A common cause is lack of confidence, which is less easy to understand in India’s case. Pakistan is still caught in an intermittently violent argument over notions of national identity and is wrestling with various other demons. It is not surprising that there should be unilluminated areas in a secular democracy, too, but surely the logical way of dispelling the darkness would be to bathe them in light?

Perhaps one day the two of them will grow up, accept their shared history and immutable geography, and learn to coexist, if not as the best of friends then at least as congenial, cooperative neighbours. Perhaps.

Comments (8) Closed

Falcon

Aug 15, 2012 09:59am

I think as Pakistan's traditional alliance with US changes and domestic threats grow, Pakistan is beginning to realize that the route of national security state chosen earlier has not panned out too well for us. On Indian side, as their economy and military might grows to compete with China, they will be less concerned about security threat from Pakistan and Pakistanis will also become more pragmatic about their defense spending. All in all, in my humble view, regardless of the intentions, it is this changed context on both sides that will determine the trajectory of relations in the medium term.

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ahmed41

Aug 15, 2012 12:37pm

Mahir Ali sahib ---" .....one day the two of them will grow up, accept their shared history and immutable geography, and learn to coexist, if not as the best of friends then at least as congenial, cooperative neighbours.---"

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Indian

Aug 15, 2012 09:02am

Progressive!! but then agan these views are too liberal for the present Pakistani masses who have been fed on hate beginning from their text books. for majority everything will boil down to Hindu and Muslim conflict .

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Murthy

Aug 15, 2012 06:12am

Who is in authority in Pakistan, the elected civilian govt, the military or the supreme court? As far as I know the civilian govt is corrupt to the core as in India, the supreme court is playing hot and cold stepping beyond its domain (unlike in India) adding to the confusion and the military is caught unable (or pretending to be unable to) to control its 'strategic assets'. So until the murky situation obtaining now in Pakistan continues, there is no meaning in talking about resolving any issues between the two countries.

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s.s.verma

Aug 15, 2012 08:33am

No discussion about Indo Pak relations are meaningful without a complete denouement of the Mumbai attack engineering by Pakistani state actors and executed by Pakistani non state actors.
And no meaningful progress will take place till the issue is completely resolved.

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Aziz

Aug 15, 2012 08:44am

Very balanced and need of the day. Mahir Ali has done well to call a spade, a spade.

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ravindra sharma

Aug 15, 2012 09:40am

well writen. hope that writer wish shall be fulfil in very near future. one thing more hope, not in decades rather in months.

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P N Eswaran

Aug 15, 2012 09:53am

The writer has drawn a comparison of Pakistan with India without the context. The conclusion he draws is that a Lion and a Rat are same because both have 4 legs, two eyes two ears etc. Such pedestrian logic has been the undoing of Pakistan. As long as people like Mahir Ali continue to write such columns the fate of Pakistan remains sealed. I hope a reputed paper like DAWN revisit the standard of articles published by it.